Why the time is right today for RFID - Industrial Launderer

We’ve known for years that radio frequency ID for rental laundries would not start to gain market acceptance until RFID technology became more reliable and less expensive.

As the new century began, the “magic price” that many operators wanted was 25 cents or less per tag. In prior years, that figure had dropped from $2.50 to $1.25 and as low as 75 cents for a single-read tag in large quantities.

But I couldn’t see the technology reaching the magic 25-cent level in the foreseeable future. The rental laundry business wasn’t about to benefit from the forecast lower price for tags in the retail market. There, many billions of units would be required, making them less costly to produce. But these tags would be much less expensive than laundry chips because they wouldn’t have to be encapsulated like those that would be required to withstand heavy-duty laundry processing.